Dr. phil. Jochen Kibel: Resistant dwelling in colonial spaces (DE)

Subjectivation, space and the subjects of rights of colonial urbanism

Kenya’s colonial legacy consists in colonial spatial planning and the establishment of a plantation economy that made millions of Kenyans landless, as well as in the residential architecture of colonial urbanism. In Nairobi, architecture was used during colonialism to spatially segregate, fixate, control and the attempt to mould colonial subjects. At the same time, these spatial policies were constantly undermined in Kenya, not only by the Mau Mau resistance movement, but also in the everyday practices of the inhabitants of colonial architecture.

The appropriation of these spatial orders went hand in hand with the rejection of colonial subjectivity and is still materialised today in a specific architectural production. The thesis of my talk is that the resistance against the spatial regime of subjectivisation that colonial urbanism established not only transformed living spaces and the morphology of the city, but also enabled new subject positions and at the same time produced new social figures. This has socio-theoretical implications for the relationship between subjectivation and the social construction of spaces; or, more generally, for the relationship between identity and heritage. Thus, the socio-material construction of spaces goes hand in hand with the spatial construction of subjects. In their interaction with spaces, subjects not only transform their tangible life-words, but also stabilise new images of themselves in exchange with built spaces and material heritage.

Using two neighbouring districts of Nairobi (Kaloleni and Makongeni) as examples, I will show in my presentation how their equally colonial architecture has been transformed differently by the residents in recent years. The former garden city of Kaloleni has been heavily densified by simple corrugated iron buildings (mabati). Although located in the immediate neighbourhood, Makongeni presents a completely different picture. The former houses for railway workers were also appropriated by the residents and used contrary to the colonial spatial programme inscribed in them. Nevertheless, it was not possible to stabilise the mabati structures in the same way here. Although the ownership claims in both neighbourhoods are similarly diffuse, the residents of Kaloleni, in contrast to Makongeni, have succeeded in developing their neighbourhood collectively. In doing so, the residents of Kaloleni also mobilise the history of colonialism and the Second World War, in which their ancestors fought for the British in the so-called Kings African Rifle (KAR). The narrative of the victorious ancestors and thus a specific memory work thus becomes an identity resource that refigures both the living conditions and the self-images of the residents of Kaloleni.

Dr. phil. Jochen Kibel is a research associate and lecturer at the Institute of Sociology and principal investigator in the Collaborative Research Centre 1265 “Re-Figuration of Spaces” at TU Berlin. His research examines the relationship between subjectivation, colonial architecture, and spatial planning. In 2023, he was a visiting fellow at the University of Nairobi.